Print This Post Print This Post

Jan

24

Urge to merge strikes again: The Point by Kyle & Ben


Please welcome a new MSM-blogosphere collaboration, The Point.

Kyle Kutuchief of The Chief Source and Ben Keeler of The Keeler Political Report (and a co-editor of mine at the Carnival of Ohio Politics – don’t miss its 101 edition this week) have taken their friendship and fight (as in energy, not animus) to a new political website, Politics.Ohio.Com, hosted by the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com. The Point is where they will discuss and disseminate news and opinion from their perspectives.

What signs of lessons learned do we see from the experience of the now-defunct Plain Dealer/cleveland.com venture, Wide Open?

1. The About This Site page which has its own page tag at the top of the home webpage;

2. A Disclaimer just under the title of The Point;

3. A banner under each blogger’s post title (seen here under Kyle and here under Ben) that specifically mentions the partisan nature of their perspective.

4. Ben reveals in this comment that they are getting paid for their work (scroll down to a comment by Ben, it’s #8).

There may be some other subtle items I’m missing and chances are also good that during negotiations, Kyle, Ben and the ABJ/Ohio.com folks talked about other ground rules that we won’t notice or notice immediately.

Other observations from someone who has been there, tried that:

1. The ABJ/Ohio.com dedicated site for politics is separate in terms of the URL from the ABJ and, at least for now, the blog posts do not come up under a Google News search at all, let alone with “Akron Beacon Journal” attached to it. (One Plain Dealer staffer had stated that one of the concerns with Wide Open and its imputing reputation to the Plain Dealer was that “Plain Dealer” appeared in Google News search returns that took searchers to Wide Open, which was on the cleveland.com platform and didn’t have “Plain Dealer” on it anywhere; the staffer felt that “Plain Dealer” showing up on the Google News search results was enough of a connection to warrant ethics concerns.)

The Plain Dealer’s Open is on cleveland.com too (cleveland.com/open) but Wide Open had the aforementioned Google News search issue that bothered some folks.

2. The template for the political blog site is lovely. I really like it. It’s easy to use and look at. It’s different and it’s got plenty of blue and red.

I don’t like that there is no “The Point” in the URL nor is there a tag or button yet that I could find on the site that would take me to “The Point” from somewhere else. Even the article about the launch doesn’t have a hyperlink on The Point. I’m going to guess that this is a stylistic and tech design issue for now.

RSS and “search here” functions are very easy to see and find and use. Overall, it doesn’t appear nearly as cumbersome or static as I thought Wide Open was. It’s warmer, less sterile – dare I say it, it’s friendlier?

3. Which makes sense – since Ben and Kyle and the launch emphasize the two blogger’s friendship.

And that’s where we find a huge difference in how this merge differs from the Wide Open merge.

Some music bands form because people put other people together and keep their fingers crossed. Other bands form much more organically. Could The Point have happened without Wide Open? Very likely. Could it have avoided some of the pitfalls of Wide Open without Wide Open? Probably not all of them, though we’ll just never know.

But the fact that Ben and Kyle have something between them that sounds as if it’s nearly decades old decreases the stress between them, and that stress was a key element on Wide Open.

4. Will the stress of just political differences work on The Point, where it didn’t on Wide Open?

Well, that depends on the goals Ben, Kyle and the ABJ/Ohio.com set for themselves. The urge to merge divergent thoughts, to give opinion and news from different perspectives, seems to be a function of at least four things:

a. People like to give their opinion;

b. The news industry feeds off fights between divergent opinions;

c. People are often attracted to such fights;

d. Having all that happen in one place online seems to optimize the desire to give opinion as well as the chance that some seepage might occur, from one perspective to another.

Folks in the news business, so long as they imagine that this merge approach could bring advertisers and users, but mostly revenue, will continue to try to merge different perspectives in one place. RedBlueAmerica.com is another effort and centrist blogs like The Moderate Voice (where I now blog regularly) and Donklephant are other variations on the same theme.

What makes me a little sad

Ben and Kyle are two of the very best – I’ve said that for as long as I’ve followed them. But they are being presented on the blog as the flipside of the same coin.

The launch article and “about us” section suggest that there will be guest writers etc. I hope so because political blogs are mirroring MSM too much: not enough women or people of color. And we know Akron has both. Likewise, senior citizens and the ever-increasing baby boomer contingent need representation (yeah, I know – what’s the difference between those two groups? Let me go take another dose of Geritol and I’ll get back to you). And, dear to me, the married with or without children crowd. We like it when folks like us blog about politics too.

But, you can’t have everything and voters under 35 certainly deserve attention, need to be heard and, frankly, hold the future in their hands. Kyle and Ben are a great shot in the arm for those reasons.

Prognosis

Well, it depends on what they’ve decided to be their goals, but in general, I expect that The Point will draw a good crowd and Ben and Kyle’s collegiality and respect will filter down through the threads.

That said, I can’t help feeling that the urge to merge may derive more from an intense wish on the part of the ones who pursue the merge, than an actual need possessed by political wonks or other folks who happen by. I lament that and try to change that on WLST all the time, but the best I hope for is for it to become contagious with readers, rather than make them go away.

Kudos to the ABJ and Ohio.com for making the effort.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:00 am January 24th, 2008 in Blogging, Media, Ohio, Politics, Tech 

Comments

2 Responses to “Urge to merge strikes again: The Point by Kyle & Ben”

  1. 1 More on media's urge to merge from Fortune's sr. editor | Writes Like She Talks on January 24th, 2008 11:22 am

    [...] column by David Kirkpatrick, “Old media meets empowered customers,” that coincidentally just appeared in my inbox.  The springboard for the point made by the title is Kirkpatrick’s [...]

  2. 2 Ben on January 24th, 2008 2:40 pm

    Thanks Jill…..I dont think I could have even provided such a review.

    I am really happy with the way the site looks. Sure, we will have some tinkering to do and a few changes here and there, but all in all, I think it looks pretty damn good.

    Thanks for your support, both here and behind the scenes.

    Ben

Leave a Reply




"));